Talk:1898 Mare Island earthquake/GA2

GA Review

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Reviewer: RecycledPixels (talk · contribs) 16:49, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

I will take on this review in the next day or so. RecycledPixels (talk) 16:49, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	Prose is clear and concise, spelling and grammar are correct. While not a GA criteria, it appears that the prose is written to a very high level of reading. Some areas of potential improvement would be to simplify some of the language used with the aim of increasing readability (it's currently at college-level readability, simplification can improve the accessibility of the article. The phrase "write to express, not to impress jumps to mind when I try to explain readability issues). But, that's just a suggestion and is not something that is one of the GA criteria. Understood, and I think that this can be explained by the idea that the text was a result of summarizing academic and/or professional articles. Most of the more recent earthquake articles, especially those written by editors that are not involved in the earthquakes wikiproject, are based on the news reports that are available within the first days, weeks, and months of an event. I do not disagree though that the text could be simplified. If you have suggestions as to what strikes you as the area that could be improved the most, please let me know. The more eyes and perspectives the better, but I also understand if you don't have the time or energy to devote to this.)
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	Minor issue. Lead paragraph should be a summary of the rest of the article and should not contain information that is not explained anywhere else in the article. I could not find anything about the $350,000 damages (including citation) in the body of the article, I only saw a mention (and citation) in the infobox, which I don't normally look at with a great deal of attention. I think this needs at least a brief mention in the actual body of the article. Again, I'd really like to see some of the phrasing simplified, but that's just a personal preference and not a GA requirement. The first reviewer also brought up the idea that the damage figure is not discussed in the body of the article. One of the things about earthquake articles is that they lean towards being heavy on parametric data (origin time, mechanism, source fault, duration, etc.) and the infobox houses those data nicely. With newer events, damage figures are explained more readily because earthquake investigations have been standardized. This event took place during the initial baby steps of seismololgy, so to speak. The damage figure is available in the Stover & Coffman catalog (reference #1), but there is no additional supportive material. Specifics in the earthquake catalogs for 19th century events are usually limited. So, going back to the infobox... I have had good success using the infobox fields to construct the first paragraph in the lead because most everything is there to establish the scope of the event (and where oftentimes there is no further explanation available). Is this OK? I carefully pored through MOS:LEAD and could only find general suggestions that the lead section summarize elements that appear elsewhere in the article, but no specific requirement of that. The infobox is technically considered to be part of the lead section. Odd, I am sure that I remember that requirement but it may have changed some time in the past, and I don't have time to dig through the history of that page to see when that happened. Anyway, based upon that new discovery, I have striken my objection in this section. Went back again and found "Apart from basic facts, significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article." in the introduction of the MOS:LEAD. I agree that the damages figure is a basic fact that can bear not being repeated, especially since there is a lack of specific information with which to expand it.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	References are presented in an appropriate format, no issues with bare URLs used as references, etc.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	No BLP issues, as would be expected in an article about an 1898 earthquake. As mentioned above, I had to hunt for a citation for the $350,000 damages figure, but found it eventually.
	2c. it contains no original research.	None found.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	No copyvios detected.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	It covers the main points I would expect to see in an earthquake article.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	Concise and to the point.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	Neutral.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No edits to the article for several months. Article is stable.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	No fair use images, all images are tagged with copyright status, either CC or PD
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	Images are relevant to the article and are appropriately captioned. I do not share the concern about the fault images raised in the previous GA review.
	7. Overall assessment.	I feel like the lead section issue is nitpicking but it shouldn't be hard to fix with a sentence or two. Minor issue with the lead section discussed and resolved above. Article meets GA standards, well done!

Additional comments/suggestions not part of the GA evaluation:

• Provide a conversion template for the 120,000 sq. km figure so people who don't know metric know what that is. Also double check the false precision that exists in your existing conversion of 2 meters to 6 feet 7 inches. I doubt they had it narrowed down to the inch.
• Some terms like "moment magnitude" and "Mercalli intensity" can use wikilinking. I know they are linked in the infobox, but they are abbreviated and appear much further down in the article than their first use in the first sentence of the article.

Thank you for your work. RecycledPixels (talk) 22:32, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Updated and completed review. Nice work. RecycledPixels (talk) 17:21, 3 September 2019 (UTC)